A response to readers regarding our Sunday Mendocino County story

Since my story about Mendocino County’s health challenges ran in the Chronicle on Sunday, I’ve gotten a lot of spirited feedback from community members. No wonder — health is a subject as complex as it is personal. So I wanted to address some of the criticism here.

First, I want to reiterate the purpose of the story was to give an overview of many different health challenges in the county, taken in whole: food, walking and exercise, disease, poverty and so on. The story wasn’t only about food or Gualala.

Many of the critiques have revolved around my characterization of food access in the county. For example, a local blogger wrote here about a number of farmers’ markets, food banks and backyard farms, noting that many take food stamps. These programs seem highly beneficial and I hope they continue to thrive.

But I would like to note that the woman featured in my story does not consider these places viable options. There are many, various reasons why they may not be on the minds of her and other county residents in her shoes. The markets may have relatively high food prices (even for those with food stamps), they have limited time, meaning growing their own food or comparison shopping at farmers’ markets may not be realistic options, and, perhaps there’s a lack of awareness that these places exist.

Here are some statistics that suggest these challenges are a struggle for relatively more residents in Mendocino County than they are for Californians in general. (This is from a 2012 county report on community health data.)

So is there fresh food in the county? Yes — but even if the options are there, there’s a decent chance that more financially vulnerable, less educated residents are not aware of them — or they know about them, and still believe they cannot afford them. A bag of groceries that a middle-class shopper might consider to be theoretically affordable for everyone may be beyond the realistic reach of those living on lower incomes.

It would seem hard to argue that healthy food access is unequivocally equal to everyone at the moment. The county’s relatively high rates of overweight-ness, obesity, early deaths and coronary heart disease surely stem from somewhere. And there is a reason why the federal government is pouring hundreds of thousands of grant dollars into the county to reverse those issues.

On a similar note, some readers disputed my discussion of fast food. What the story says is that the county as a whole – not Gualala alone — has a ratio of two fast-food joints for every one grocery or produce store. You can see for yourself by checking out this report on food access compiled by the county’s health department in late 2010. My story was also certainly not intended to advocate for Costco and Trader Joe’s to wipe out all of Mendocino’s mom-and-pop markets, only to highlight the difficulties of finding a compromise between local businesses and, for many residents, affordability.

Still other readers felt that I did not accurately portray the opportunities for exercise in the county, with many pointing out their favorite hiking trails and beaches. I should have acknowledged these and better defined the sort of exercise that I was discussing and that government officials are worried about. The federal government is giving money to Mendocino because county health officials believe the region suffers from a lack of walkability: the kind of walking that one incorporates multiple times into a daily routine, like to work or school or around the neighborhood, not just weekend activities.

A few minutes at the website Walkscore.com, which calculates the walkability of cities and towns, reveal that walkability widely varies among communities in Mendocino County. Relatively denser cities like Willits and Ukiah have very high scores, as does Fort Bragg. Mendocino, with a score of 69 out of 100, is considered “somewhat walkable.” But Gualala has a score of 48 (out of 100), which the website puts in the “car-dependent” category, Covelo is scored at 45 and Boonville is 31. And so on.

No single portrayal of a place — especially one as enormous, varied (and beautiful) as Mendocino County — will live up to every resident’s personal perspective of it. But I have done my best to provide one that is nuanced, accurate and factually supported.

UPDATE: This post has been corrected to reflect higher Walkscore ratings for Fort Bragg and Mendocino and to include Covelo’s score.